


a lesson in canvases

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinogens, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sailing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bad acid trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: John realizes he might have an ulterior motive for dragging everyone out to buy a Greek island.
Relationships: Cynthia Lennon/John Lennon, John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	a lesson in canvases

**Author's Note:**

> No defamation intended and everything within is totally fictional!
> 
> I imagine that the trip the Beatle gang took to Greece to check out Greek islands to buy and build a Beatle commune on went totally fine! Instead, I decided to put John through it in this one, lads! My b!
> 
> Entirely my own interpretation, but I wrote John as having undiagnosed BPD. Exacerbated by the acid he’s taking at the time. The trip in this particular story goes bad. So, be careful if bad experiences with hallucinogens aren’t your bag.
> 
> This is, I think, the most explicit thing I’ve ever written :/

There’s acid in the sugar cubes that they use for tea first thing in the morning. John sits out on the nose of the boat as they set sail from Athens. He shuts his eyes to the rustling wind in his hair, takes in the sea salt and warm sun. He’s always connected to water. It’s what must come from growing up in a port city. He likes the way crashing waves will come back over and over and over again. 

George sits down next to him. His eyes are as blown black as John’s are. He hands John a ukulele and John loses track of how much time they spend in front of one another, singing and playing back and forth. They’re speaking to one another, underneath it all. John feels George somewhere beneath his skin. Tucked away in all the places he belongs. John finds love there: camaraderie and admiration. George is everywhere that John needs him to be, and John’s always been glad for it. He hopes he’s where George needs him too. 

Somewhere, Ringo joins them, tapping out a beat against the floor of the boat. John shuts his eyes and loses where he ends and the other two begin. Somewhere, between his voice and George’s voice, John hears Paul laugh. He opens his eyes and realizes he isn’t with them. 

He glances over his shoulder where Paul is lounging with Jane. Paul traces lazy lines down her arm and he doesn’t look John’s way. He’s rooted in the moment that he’s in. John had been too. Until he realizes he can feel Paul’s fingers on his arm, as though Paul wasn’t touching Jane at all. He looks back at George and Ringo and finds that he’s lost. He sets his ukulele down and distantly wonders if he’s spent too much time in the sun. He feels vaguely ill, like he’s just gone too hot. He stands, using Ringo’s shoulder to steady himself. 

“You alright?” Ringo asks, peering through the sunlight up at him. 

“Yeah,” John answers distractedly. “I think I just need some water or something.”

He passes by the lounge chairs where Jane and Paul are practically on top of one another. He rubs the sunlight out of his eyes, sees stars in the blackness behind his eyelids. He thinks he might fall over if he isn’t careful. He grasps onto the boat’s railing, allowing it to lead him towards the inner cabin.

“You alright?” he hears Paul ask after him. 

“Stop asking me that,” John answers, as though it isn’t Paul’s first time. 

Paul doesn’t follow him, that isn’t lost on John. 

He grabs himself a bottle of water and sits down on the couch in the cabin. He connects to the way the boat rocks underneath him. Connects to the sound of water lapping up against the bottom of the boat. He’s on the verge of a bad trip; he knows one when it’s coming. He shuts his eyes and doesn’t know where to find a good memory to keep himself calm. He thinks of George and Ringo, and their ukuleles. He thinks of their music and how George and Ringo both felt like they were holding him together, when he couldn’t do the same for himself. 

Beyond him, someone tinkers with a few glasses in the kitchenette. John zeroes in on glass against glass; it sounds like music. He thinks he could write something just as beautiful. He smiles to himself, misses how whoever it is is calling out to him. 

Until finally: “John, love?”

“Hmm?” he mutters, coming back to reality. He glances towards the kitchenette and it’s Cynthia. Sunglasses still on, blond hair in a knot on the top of her head, and she’s glancing over her shoulder at him, smiling the way he imagines he’s smiling. 

“Can you bring me that glass?” she repeats, nodding down at an empty flute one of them had chugged a mimosa out of over breakfast on the coffee table in front of him.

John gathers it up, watches the light cast rainbow shadows through the crystal of it as he goes. He hands it to Cynthia, whose hands feel warm and soft. They stand next to one another at the sink, close enough that John can hitch his hip into the dip of her waist. They slot together well, in a way that John wished he could understand more. It doesn’t feel enough; on his thousandth trip, or more, all he can still feel are the small spaces between them, even though they’re touching one another. 

“It’s nice out here,” Cynthia says sweetly. 

“Yeah,” John agrees absently. 

“Maybe you and I could go away,” she says, slowly, like she’s testing the water. 

John knits his eyebrows together and turns to look at her. The sunlight paints a halo around her face. It feels good to look at. “We are away,” he says. 

Cynthia goes a bit red. She looks back down at the dishes in the sink. “I mean without our friends.”

“Without our friends?” John repeats. He shakes his head; feeling suddenly suffocated by all the little spaces between them. He can feel her body up next to his, he knows it’s there, but the spaces between them itch and needle at all the wrong places. “If you’ve got friends, why wouldn’t you want to go away with them?”

“You don’t like spending time away from them,” Cynthia observes; John feels her words coming down on him as if they’re something that can actually hurt him. “Even if it’s with me.”

“They keep my head on,” John tries to explain, but that certainly doesn’t feel true right now. He thinks of Paul with Jane, he thinks of Paul kissing Jane, and wishes he hadn’t. 

“You need them too much,” she continues, and John feels his heart in his throat. He tries to swallow it down, tries to put all back in place, but her words are out and alive now. John clings to countertop in front of him and thinks, this is it. This is the bad trip. This is the bad trip he’ll never get himself out of. 

“That’s not --”

“I don’t think it’s healthy.”

“Well,” John bites back. He digs his nails into the counter. He can’t bear to look up at her. He thinks he’ll see Mimi in her place. “Good thing I’m not England’s model for health then.” He hears her sigh; she knows one of his dismissals when she hears it, better than just about anyone. Except maybe Paul. John shakes Paul out of his head. He wants off the boat. Whose bright idea was it to spend the day somewhere you can’t get out of?

The whole thing had been a stupid idea, John suddenly decides. The boat, the Greek island, the acid. All of it. His own bogus idea, that he’d actually  _ thought _ might be good for him -- good for all of them. But all it really did was magnify his own inordinate amount of desperate need for people to tell him that they love him --

“Do you love me?” he blurts out, knowing it’s the acid’s fault, but when the doubt is there, there’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

Cyn pauses. If they were any further from separation, she might have spent the moment reassuring him. She might have touched him. But, instead, she says: “You shouldn’t ask me that.” She sets her washed glasses down in the drying rack. She means to leave him. John knows it. “It isn’t fair.” He wants to tell her that it isn’t about what’s  _ fair _ , but too much of him knows that she’s right. She goes without touching him. John listens to her sandals against the hardwood floor until they’re too far away to hear anymore. 

He wonders where she’s gone, or who she’s gone to be with.

John keeps to himself in the cabin until they dock at their first island. Ringo pokes his head inside to rouse him, and they’re off. The sun and the waves start to make John feel a bit more like himself. He watches the water rush up against the stones at his feet, backward and forward, always coming back. He focuses on that part: always coming back. 

The island isn’t what they want, so they give up on inspecting it. Nobody climbs back onto the boat, they stay out in the sun, on the nicest beach any of them have ever been to. John sits himself down in the sand, close enough to the rushing water that it still laps up at his toes every so often. 

He watches Paul and Julian follow the waves out deeper into the sea and then charge back as the waves chase them towards the shore. Julian’s laughing harder than John thinks he’s ever seen him. The waves get too close to their heels so Paul scoops Julian up by the waist and swings him up onto his shoulder. He sets him down when he deems they’re safe. He ruffles the hair on Julian’s head and peers out across the beach until he finds John, alone in the sand. Julian’s tugging at his pants, trying to get his attention, before none of it matters anymore, and the boy takes off towards Cynthia. Paul stays rooted where he is, watching John. John isn’t so self-conscious to stop watching right back. 

Slowly, Paul approaches him, sits himself down in the sand too. He looks out over the water and sighs. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asks. 

John shrugs helplessly. “Best to not ask a man that question when he’s on drugs.”

“Aye,” Paul says, digging into his pocket for a cigarette. He hands one to John, even lights it up for him too. 

“You’re very good with him,” John finally observes, and Paul knows what he means because he’d caught John looking. He shrugs wryly. “How are you so good with him?”

“It’s just a switch, innit?” he says simply. He shrugs again, and John doesn’t know what he means.  _ Of course _ he doesn’t know what he means. “It’s a kid switch. You just gotta switch off that bit of your brain that gets embarrassed.”

John takes a long drag, feels bitterness join the smoke in his lungs. “Nobody likes to see me when my switches are turned off.”

Paul looks away, starts to draw lines in the sand between them. He chews on the inside of his cheek and looks to make a lightning decision, because then he says: “We learn from what we saw, you know. When we were little.” John swallows hard; feels every muscle in his body go so tense that he thinks he’ll feel sore tomorrow. “Nobody ever really let you be a kid --”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” John says quickly around his cigarette, because his Uncle George had. Uncle George  _ always _ had. 

“Okay,” Paul allows. 

They both look out across the rolling waves, the sunlight bouncing whitehot off the surface of the water. It’s too much. John craves the quiet and dark from the boat’s cabin. Then, he feels Paul’s hand at the small of his back, and everything seems to go even brighter. 

John sees Paul glance over at where George and Ringo are sitting together. George is still clinging to his ukulele; they’re still singing and laughing. Their trips have gone exactly the way they were meant to. Paul looks back at him and swallows hard. He sets his chin down on John’s shoulder. “You’ve got bad stuff,” he says. 

John hangs his chin down towards his chest. Wills the acid to just make its way through his system so he can stop feeling this way. “Yeah,” he says, because what’s the point in lying?

He goes quiet. He knows that everyone’s noticed, but he doesn’t give a shit. He hardly remembers the last two islands they see. 

John comes down in tandem with his friends pairing off for bed. He’s practically sober by the time it’s just he and Paul left in the boat’s lounge, and he hates it. He needs to be high with Paul. He had to meet Paul in the middle somewhere. Paul was high all the time; happy and creative, just as easy as breathing. John had to swallow acid to be halfway-happy and halfway-creative. And Paul still had him beat in both categories. 

“You want some?” Paul asks, casually holding out his nearly burnt-out joint. 

“Yeah,” John mumbles, reaching out for it. The last few dregs of acid in his system make his skin feel as though it’s burning where he and Paul’s fingers brush up against one another. He takes a long drag, fills his lungs with it, tries to fill his head with it too. 

“You still tripping?” Paul asks, laying deeper into the couch. He glances at John beneath hooded eyes.

“Not really,” John says.

“You had me worried,” Paul says. “You went quiet.” 

“I’m always quiet,” John says back, exhaling some excess smoke through his nose. 

“Yeah,” Paul mutters. He reaches for his joint back. “I suppose that’s true these days.” John goes stiff. He hates when Paul gets soppy about the good times. Their ideas of good never seemed to match up. John supposes every day seems good when Paul looks back on it. John’s clouded by bad days; he’d gone number one, and then everything had gone to shit. “I can’t believe how noisy you used to be,” Paul marvels. 

“Haven’t got much to say, have I?” John gripes. “Didn’t have much to say then, either,” he allows.

“And still, we all listened,” Paul says, polishing off the joint between them. John miserably wishes he’d allowed him one more drag. He thinks, the taste of Paul, Paul’s lips on his, that’s the only thing that’s ever helped him feel alive. He feels his cheeks go a bit red. This is why he keeps quiet now. This is the sort of thing he thinks about. Can’t run the risk of spewing this out for just anybody to hear. 

“Bloody stupid of youse,” he grumbles. 

“Oh, yeah?” Paul says. “He says from a yacht on the Aegean Sea.” Paul huffs a laugh, so John does too. He supposes there was never a chance of him being happy. If he couldn’t be happy here, high and sailing, where was he meant to be happy? “I wouldn’t be here without you,” Paul says. He must not mean it because he says it so simply. John feels his chest go tight. His heart starts to race somewhere behind his rib cage. “That isn’t lost on me,” Paul continues. 

“Do you feel like you still need me?” John asks and he regrets it the second it comes out of his mouth. It sounds so small that even Paul hears it. Even Paul -- still high on  _ Pepper _ and lost in the London avant-garde scene -- hears how small he’s gone. Paul sits himself up. John keeps his eyes forward, but he can feel Paul watching him. He’s careful about it, protective, like any quick move might make him skittish. But John doesn’t take it back. He doesn’t take it back because he  _ wants _ to know the answer. If it’s a no, he just needs to hear it. Straight from Paul’s mouth. Not from Robert Fraser’s, or Peter Asher’s.

“Are you alright?” Paul starts, but John won’t let him turn this around. He’d asked Paul a direct question. His asking it at all isn’t indicative of whether or not he’s ‘ _ alright _ ’, he thinks miserably, only for a second, because if he dwells on that too long, he’ll see how false it all is. 

“Sometimes I don’t know,” John interrupts him. 

“How am I meant to show you?” Paul asks; he’s gentle, genuinely curious and willing to do whatever it is that John answers with. 

“You remember how you were with Stuart?” John asks. He can’t remember the last time he’s said Stuart’s name out loud. He lived somewhere so deep inside of him, precious and his, speaking his name out loud makes him feel like he’s giving a piece of his friend up. 

“Yeah,” Paul says carefully. 

“Why aren’t you ever like that anymore?”

Paul goes rigid. He calculates every way he could phrase this, and John hates it. He wishes he’d just say what he means. Say it quick, so John knows that it’s true. “Because it wasn’t a good way to be,” Paul tells him. Paul hates the way jealousy and clinginess had made him; John thrives on it. “For either of us,” he adds. 

John shakes his head. “It made me feel worth something,” he says, and he wonders what some hack with a degree in psychology might make of that. 

Paul drops his chin towards his chest. John knows he’s dying to ask again:  _ are you alright _ ? But he’s been shut down once before. He knows he needs to be tactile if he’s expecting John to answer him. “Why are you talking about this?” he ventures quietly. His hand twitches, as though he wants to reach out and touch him. John wishes he would. “Have you been thinking of him?”

John sighs, starts to pick at things that aren’t there underneath his fingernails. “I’m always thinking of him,” he says, as quick as it is truthful. 

Paul sighs. He’d known the answer, knows it for the way that he never stops thinking of his mother, but he looks as though he hadn’t expected John to say it. He pats his pockets down for another joint, a cigarette, anything, but he comes up empty. “Shit,” he mumbles. “I haven’t got anything to smoke.”

“It’s alright,” John says, and he’s surprised that he actually means it. 

Paul keeps his eyes low. He chews at his bottom lip and then finally says: “I shouldn’t have treated Stuart the way I did.” John turns to watch him. He thinks Paul’s shaking with it; the weight of putting words to something so horrible. He suddenly sees the years of guilt: all five of them. “You just loved him,” he says with a shrug, and he makes it sound so simple. John wishes he’d made it sound that simple to Stuart while he was still alive. “You loved him and I was cruel about it.”

“I did love him,” John says, and he’s hardly speaking to Paul at all; he says it to that part of himself where Stuart still lives. Maybe he’ll hear him. 

“Christ, John,” Paul suddenly mutters. He turns his glassy eyes away and sniffles once, pulling it all back together. “Why didn’t you tell me you were so…” John holds his breath, waits for what he might say:  _ torn up about it, stuck in the past, melodramatic about life and death _ , but then Paul just says: “... _ Sad _ .” And John thinks he’s come too close. He hates that it’s, yet again, become a conversation about how much he needs Paul, and not the other way around. 

“I thought I was,” John says, thinking of just about every song he’s ever written. 

“You  _ weren’t _ ,” Paul says. “You  _ never _ said --”

“You were supposed to know me,” John pokes back. He looks at Paul and their eyes meet. The way they had at Paul’s place on Cavendish the first time they’d dropped acid together. Without a word, Paul had promised that night that he would always  _ know _ him. Know him, see him, and love him anyway. 

“I do know you, John,” Paul tries, but it feels flat. “I know you and I need you --”

“I’ve always needed you more than you need me,” John says over him, spitting Cynthia’s words back at him. His tone goes terse and bitter. 

“What are you accusing me of?” Paul asks. He shifts closer; desperate in his own bewilderment. 

“I don’t know,” John answers honestly. Of lying about loving him? Of loving him and planning to leave anyway, like everybody else? John doesn’t know. They’re quiet, but Paul listens to him. And he catches him. 

“Is that what this whole thing’s about?” he asks. “This trip. The island.” John shakes his head, silently deploring Paul not to  _ go there _ . “Nobody’s leaving you,” he says, and John feels something crack in his middle. He shakes his head again. “You don’t have to gather us all up on some island. Nobody’s leaving. We  _ want _ to be near you --”

“That’s not --” John croaks out, just to get Paul to stop talking, but he can’t even finish the thought. Because he’s sure that it must be true. Now that it’s been said, he’s sure it must be true.

“I’m not leaving you,” Paul amends, needling even closer to the truth. “Does it feel like I’m leaving you?”

John swallows hard. He keeps his eyes down on his own hands, but decides to be honest. He says: “Yes,” and it hardly sounds like him. 

Paul edges even closer. John can feel his knee pressing up against the outside of his thigh. It makes him realize that Paul still hasn’t reached out to touch him. He still wishes he would. 

“Why?” Paul asks. “What have I done?” he presses, as though there’s something that he can actually do to  _ reverse _ this. 

“You don’t see me anymore --”

“I’m looking right at you,” Paul urges, and when John looks up, he finds it to be true. He stares so deep into Paul McCartney until he finds himself. The small sad thing asking his friend if he still needs him around. He sees himself: sad and quiet and alone, and high and sailing. 

“Do I look happy?” he asks, hopeful that someone out there might see him differently than he sees himself. 

Paul takes a deep breath, says: “You look like you’re trying to find something --”

And it sounds so disingenuous that John hears himself scoff. He’s back at square one. Paul doesn’t see him. He hasn’t been able to see him for years. He makes himself sound angry and bitter, thinking it might hide how devastatingly lonely he feels out in the middle of the sea. “Last year was the worst year of my life,” he says, and he wonders if he’s told anybody that. He stares through Paul; through the sheen that Paul’s trying to cast over them: their immovable partnership, forged through similar losses and mutual respect and  _ need _ for one another. It doesn’t feel true, so John gives him the ultimate test: “Had you noticed?”

Paul falters; for the first time since their eyes have met, he falters. He hadn’t noticed. Not really. 

“I knew you were having a hard time,” he tries. 

“A hard time,” John parrots back bitterly.

“With America,” Paul tries to explain. “And the film, and Alma --”

John clamps his mouth shut. He thinks of Alma Cogan: the only woman he’d ever allowed to see him the way Paul sees him. The only woman who saw everything and wasn’t afraid. The only woman who ever made any of his songs better. Another person to love and lose. “I hardly knew her,” he says instead. 

“Right,” Paul says gently, knowing John’s patterns of grief better than anyone. John thinks Paul’s back. He’s seeing him again. He’s seeing everything laid bare, and he isn’t leaving. “John,” he coaxes. John doesn’t move. He thinks he’ll shatter if he moves. He thinks that if he looks at Paul, he’ll be lost to him. The way he’d lost himself to Paul in the middle of that horrible hurricane in Key West. Paul’s lips on his. One of the only nights in his life he remembers feeling alive. Absently, he feels Paul’s fingers at his elbow. “Johnny?” Paul tries again. 

“What?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says again, and John realizes he’ll say it as many times as John needs to hear it. But John doesn’t know what that number might be, or if anyone would ever be able to reach it. “I’m not going anywhere,” Paul repeats. 

And John shakes his head. Stuart had said that once. His mother. Alma, too. It didn’t mean anything. “I don’t know that,” he tells Paul miserably.

“What can I do?” Paul asks, his voice only a whisper, just as it had sounded in Florida. Quiet and private enough, hidden under thunder and lightning, so that John knew that everything he said was only meant for him. “How can I show you?”

John thinks,  _ kiss me _ . John thinks,  _ remember Florida the way I do, want me, need me, and never let go _ . He only thinks it, but Paul must hear him. Because Paul’s hand is on his cheek, his thumb brushing across his cheek bone, and then they meet somewhere in the middle. Paul’s lips are on his, and he feels Paul breathe life into him again. He closes his eyes, drinks it in, and feels Paul shift forward on the couch. He feels Paul’s hand at his cheek move so that it’s at the back of his neck, cradling his head like he knows that John will break if he isn’t careful. Then, Paul shifts one of John’s legs so that he can nestle himself between them and John feels like he’s found home. 

Paul won’t stop kissing him and John is glad for it. Even as he gently guides John down towards the arm of the couch, setting his head down on the pillow there, he doesn’t stop kissing him. John feels Paul’s chest against his own; feels one of his hands in his hair and the other clutching at his waist as if John’s something that belongs to him. He feels his own heart beating wildly in his chest and he wonders if it would ever be possible to feel  _ too alive _ . He clings to Paul, holding onto it all, because he knows there will come a time where he won’t be able to remember how to breathe, he won’t remember who he is or that he’s even a person, and he’ll need to know this night, how Paul’s made him feel, the same way he’d needed to remember Key West.

“Paul,” John manages when Paul pulls away to give themselves a second to breathe. 

“I know,” he mutters, resting his forehead against John’s. 

“Please,” John continues and he doesn’t know why. He clings to Paul’s t-shirt, pulls him down further against him, even though he hadn’t even thought they could get even closer. He feels Paul nod against him, but his mouth’s moving before he can stop it. “Please just…” He trails off because he doesn’t know what he needs. He doesn’t know what it is that Paul gives to him. All he knows is that it has to rouse him. It has to fill him up so he can go on a few more years. 

“I know, Johnny,” Paul says, trailing soft kisses along his jawline. And John hadn’t even said it, but Paul  _ does _ know.  _ Please just be with me. Please just love me so I can learn to do the same. Please just make this all go away _ . 

John closes his eyes, feels hot tears trace down his cheeks, and he wonders how he’s gotten here. He hasn’t cried, he hasn’t felt anything in months, but Paul’s brought it all out of him. Paul’s brought it all out and loves him because of it. Paul doesn’t acknowledge the tears, doesn’t tell him to stop, he just brushes them away and kisses the tracks they leave behind. 

Paul drops his hips down against John’s, presses their bodies closer together, and John doesn’t mind the way he whimpers into Paul’s mouth. He lifts his hips up to meet Paul’s and wishes they could be closer. He reaches down between their bodies, palms Paul through the soft linen of his shorts, and loves the way Paul almost loses his balance above him. 

He pulls Paul out of his shorts, his pants too, thinks about the last time he’d held Paul like this and feels twenty-three again. Still sad, still afraid, but breathing all the same. He strokes Paul a few times before he feels Paul’s fingers batting at the back of his hand. “Stop, stop,” he breathes against John’s temple. John does as he’s told. “Let me,” Paul says. 

John shivers at the way Paul’s hand finds the top of his waistband, tracing along the sensitive, sunburnt skin over his hips. He feels exposed and electric as a live wire, but safe with Paul’s body on top of him. 

John presses his head back against his pillow when he feels Paul’s hand around him. Paul kisses him hard, gobbling up the sounds John realizes he must be making. He realizes that he should remember where they are and why they need to be quiet, but Paul just makes him feel like they’re lost together in a room with no discernible walls, no signifying features: everywhere and nowhere all at once. Alive and physical, but ethereal and perfect too. 

They rut against one another, skin on skin, and John sees them for what they are: the same dirt from the same star that’s somehow found its way back together. 

Paul buries his nose against John’s collarbone as his thrusts grow a little more erratic. They’re rising together. Paul’s bringing him along. John presses bruises into Paul’s bicep before he realizes that there’s something missing. 

“Paul,” John says to the way that Paul’s begun to nip at his shoulder. “Paul, wait.”

“What?” Paul asks, only slowing his pace slightly. He pulls away just far enough that John can kiss him. He holds Paul’s face there, bucks his hips up to Paul’s and matches his rhythm. He keeps his lips pressed to Paul’s until they both come, gasping staggering breaths into one another’s mouths. Paul trembles above him until John pulls him down on top of him, bearing all of his weight, the way he likes to. 

Paul places quiet, gracious kisses along John’s neck and jawline. John does the same with his fingers up the back of Paul’s shirt. 

What they’ve just done rushes over John, scrubs him clean. And when it’s finished, something else falls over him too. He realizes Paul’s brought it  _ all _ back. He brought back love and connection and happiness, but he brought back the sadness and doubt too. He was never one without the other. The only time he wasn’t sad was when he was nothing at all. 

“You wouldn’t ever do that because you felt sorry for me, would you?” he hears himself ask. 

Paul props himself up on one elbow and looks down at John beneath him. They’re still so close that their hearts are beating up against one another. It’s a closeness that Paul’s never thought he could offer another human being. It’s the sort of love that exhausts him. The sort of love that feels like a tangible trade of a piece of his own heart. But it isn’t enough. John’s still afraid beneath him. 

“No,” he promises. “Never.”

John nods, only because he doesn’t feel wholly convinced. He doubts he ever would. 

“You do it because you love me,” John says for him. 

Now, it’s Paul’s turn to nod. “Yes,” he says fervently. “There’s never been any other reason.”

“Okay,” John says. 

Paul sighs heavily. He lifts himself up off of John, keeping his eyes down on him protectively. John knows he must be wondering what else there is that he can give. And John doesn’t have an answer for him. He feels beyond hope, beyond repair. “We should go to bed,” Paul offers gently. 

“I think I’ll sleep out here,” John answers, not ready or willing to face Cynthia or Julian. 

“Are you sure?” Paul asks, though John can tell he doesn’t think that’s right. John simply nods, so Paul says, “alright,” and he stands himself up off the couch. He finds a blanket chucked on the chair opposite them. He lays it down over John’s shoulders and crouches down in front of him. He runs his hand through John’s hair and John finally sees that he’s searching for an answer as much as John is. He wants to set John right and for the first time, John knows they’re both wondering if Paul would ever be able to do it on his own. 

“I think I must need a guru, or something,” John offers as an apology. It isn’t Paul’s fault, after all, that he’s the way that he is. It isn’t Paul’s fault that loving someone isn’t always enough. “Someone with all the answers.”

Paul sighs. He means to smile, but John sees his lips twitch into a frown and his chin quivers for just a moment before he looks down at the carpet between his knees. “Yeah, maybe.”


End file.
